The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1, Thomas Babington Macaulay [ebook pc reader txt] 📗

of their acquisitions. The land thus

surrendered was capriciously divided among claimants whom the

government chose to favour. But great numbers who protested that

they were innocent of all disloyalty, and some persons who

boasted that their loyalty had been signally displayed, obtained

neither restitution nor compensation, and filled France and Spain

with outcries against the injustice and ingratitude of the House

of Stuart.


Meantime the government had, even in England, ceased to be

popular. The Royalists had begun to quarrel with the court and

with each other; and the party which had been vanquished,

trampled down, and, as it seemed, annihilated, but which had

still retained a strong principle of life, again raised its head,

and renewed the interminable war.


Had the administration been faultless, the enthusiasm with which

the return of the King and the termination of the military

tyranny had been hailed could not have been permanent. For it is

the law of our nature that such fits of excitement shall always

be followed by remissions. The manner in which the court abused

its victory made the remission speedy and complete. Every

moderate man was shocked by the insolence, cruelty, and perfidy

with which the Nonconformists were treated. The penal laws had

effectually purged the oppressed party of those insincere members

whose vices had disgraced it, and had made it again an honest and

pious body of men. The Puritan, a conqueror, a ruler, a

persecutor, a sequestrator, had been detested. The Puritan,

betrayed and evil entreated, deserted by all the timeservers who,

in his prosperity, had claimed brotherhood with him, hunted from

his home, forbidden under severe penalties to pray or receive the

sacrament according to his conscience, yet still firm in his

resolution to obey God rather than man, was, in spite of some

unpleasing recollections, an object of pity and respect to well

constituted minds. These feelings became stronger when it was

noised abroad that the court was not disposed to treat Papists

with the same rigour which had been shown to Presbyterians. A

vague suspicion that the King and the Duke were not sincere

Protestants sprang up and gathered strength. Many persons too who

had been disgusted by the austerity and hypocrisy of the Saints

of the Commonwealth began to be still more disgusted by the open

profligacy of the court and of the Cavaliers, and were disposed

to doubt whether the sullen preciseness of Praise God Barebone

might not be preferable to the outrageous profaneness and

licentiousness of the Buckinghams and Sedleys. Even immoral men,

who were not utterly destitute of sense and public spirit,

complained that the government treated the most serious matters

as trifles, and made trifles its serious business. A King might

be pardoned for amusing his leisure with wine, wit, and beauty.

But it was intolerable that he should sink into a mere lounger

and voluptuary, that the gravest affairs of state should be

neglected, and that the public service should be starved and the

finances deranged in order that harlots and parasites might grow

rich.


A large body of Royalists joined in these complaints, and added

many sharp reflections on the King's ingratitude. His whole

revenue, indeed, would not have sufficed to reward them all in

proportion to their own consciousness of desert. For to every

distressed gentleman who had fought under Rupert or Derby his own

services seemed eminently meritorious, and his own sufferings

eminently severe. Every one had flattered himself that, whatever

became of the rest, he should be largely recompensed for all that

he had lost during the civil troubles, and that the restoration

of the monarchy would be followed by the restoration of his own

dilapidated fortunes. None of these expectants could restrain his

indignation, when he found that he was as poor under the King as

he had been under the Rump or the Protector. The negligence and

extravagance of the court excited the bitter indignation of these

loyal veterans. They justly said that one half of what His

Majesty squandered on concubines and buffoons would gladden the

hearts of hundreds of old Cavaliers who, after cutting down their

oaks and melting their plate to help his father, now wandered

about in threadbare suits, and did not know where to turn for a

meal.


At the same time a sudden fall of rents took place. The income of

every landed proprietor was diminished by five shillings in the

pound. The cry of agricultural distress rose from every shire in

the kingdom; and for that distress the government was, as usual,

held accountable. The gentry, compelled to retrench their

expenses for a period, saw with indignation the increasing

splendour and profusion of Whitehall, and were immovably fixed in

the belief that the money which ought to have supported their

households had, by some inexplicable process, gone to the

favourites of the King.


The minds of men were now in such a temper that every public act

excited discontent. Charles had taken to wife Catharine Princess

of Portugal. The marriage was generally disliked; and the murmurs

became loud when it appeared that the King was not likely to have

any legitimate posterity. Dunkirk, won by Oliver from Spain, was

sold to Lewis the Fourteenth, King of France. This bargain

excited general indignation. Englishmen were already beginning to

observe with uneasiness the progress of the French power, and to

regard the House of Bourbon with the same feeling with which

their grandfathers had regarded the House of Austria. Was it

wise, men asked, at such a time, to make any addition to the

strength of a monarchy already too formidable? Dunkirk was,

moreover, prized by the people, not merely as a place of arms,

and as a key to the Low Countries, but also as a trophy of

English valour. It was to the subjects of Charles what Calais had

been to an earlier generation, and what the rock of Gibraltar, so

manfully defended, through disastrous and perilous years, against

the fleets and armies of a mighty coalition, is to ourselves. The

plea of economy might have had some weight, if it had been urged

by an economical government. But it was notorious that the

charges of Dunkirk fell far short of the sums which were wasted

at court in vice and folly. It seemed insupportable that a

sovereign, profuse beyond example in all that regarded his own

pleasures, should be niggardly in all that regarded the safety

and honour of the state.


The public discontent was heightened, when it was found that,

while Dunkirk was abandoned on the plea of economy, the fortress

of Tangier, which was part of the dower of Queen Catharine, was

repaired and kept up at an enormous charge. That place was

associated with no recollections gratifying to the national

pride: it could in no way promote the national interests: it

involved us in inglorious, unprofitable, and interminable wars

with tribes of half savage Mussulmans and it was situated in a

climate singularly unfavourable to the health and vigour of the

English race.


But the murmurs excited by these errors were faint, when compared

with the clamours which soon broke forth. The government engaged

in war with the United Provinces. The House of Commons readily

voted sums unexampled in our history, sums exceeding those which

had supported the fleets and armies of Cromwell at the time when

his power was the terror of all the world. But such was the

extravagance, dishonesty, and incapacity of those who had

succeeded to his authority, that this liberality proved worse

than useless. The sycophants of the court, ill qualified to

contend against the great men who then directed the arms of

Holland, against such a statesman as De Witt, and such a

commander as De Ruyter, made fortunes rapidly, while the sailors

mutinied from very hunger, while the dockyards were unguarded,

while the ships were leaky and without rigging. It was at length

determined to abandon all schemes of offensive war; and it soon

appeared that even a defensive war was a task too hard for that

administration. The Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames, and burned

the ships of war which lay at Chatham. It was said that, on the

very day of that great humiliation, the King feasted with the

ladies of his seraglio, and amused himself with hunting a moth

about the supper room. Then, at length, tardy justice was done to

the memory of Oliver. Everywhere men magnified his valour,

genius, and patriotism. Everywhere it was remembered how, when he

ruled, all foreign powers had trembled at the name of England,

how the States General, now so haughty, had crouched at his feet,

and how, when it was known that he was no more, Amsterdam was

lighted up as for a great deliverance, and children ran along the

canals, shouting for joy that the Devil was dead. Even Royalists

exclaimed that the state could be saved only by calling the old

soldiers of the Commonwealth to arms. Soon the capital began to

feel the miseries of a blockade. Fuel was scarcely to be

procured. Tilbury Fort, the place where Elizabeth had, with manly

spirit, hurled foul scorn at Parma and Spain, was insulted by the

invaders. The roar of foreign guns was heard, for the first time,

by the citizens of London. In the Council it was seriously

proposed that, if the enemy advanced, the Tower should be

abandoned. Great multitudes of people assembled in the streets

crying out that England was bought and sold. The houses and

carriages of the ministers were attacked by the populace; and it

seemed likely that the government would have to deal at once with

an invasion and with an insurrection. The extreme danger, it is

true, soon passed by. A treaty was concluded, very different from

the treaties which Oliver had been in the habit of signing; and

the nation was once more at peace, but was in a mood scarcely

less fierce and sullen than in the days of shipmoney.


The discontent engendered by maladministration was heightened by

calamities which the best administration could not have averted.

While the ignominious war with Holland was raging, London

suffered two great disasters, such as never, in so short a space

of time, befel one city. A pestilence, surpassing in horror any

that during three centuries had visited the island, swept away,

in six mouths, more than a hundred thousand human beings. And

scarcely had the dead cart ceased to go its rounds, when a fire,

such as had not been known in Europe since the conflagration of

Rome under Nero, laid in ruins the whole city, from the Tower to

the Temple, and from the river to the purlieus of Smithfield.


Had there been a general election while the nation was smarting

under so many disgraces and misfortunes, it is probable that the

Roundheads would have regained ascendency in